meritocrat

Let's say that Neanderthals had never become extinct.

Today they live on special reservations in which they can hunt and live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Evidently, they are a fellow hominid species and are related to us. Nonetheless, is it 'moral' for them to possess the same 'rights' as us?

For example, could (or should) Neanderthals have a basic right to life?

Jinto

If they're living on reservations, then that means that they are not under the jurisdiction of our government and therefore we need to leave the presence or absence of any rights to whatever government they have formed for themselves.

Edwin

The way I heard it, Neanderthals were about as intelligent as us, so maybe it would be us in the reservations

Anyway, I would say that we should treat them the same as humans, and give them all the rights we have. After all, why not?

meritocrat

Neanderthals are believed to have had a bigger brain than modern humans. Albeit there speech patterns are not thought to be as advanced as ours. Also, their technological level never truly changed throughout the length of their existence.

I said reservations because I personally think they would be at the same 'level' if they had not become extinct. As for the same rights, well I'd agree to an extent.

Thalia

Good question. I've wondered this, too, but in the form of what if we did like in Jurassic Park to some hominid that is close to us in intelligence but not quite. How would we treat them. (Any one see Encino Man with Paulie Shore? )

Another question is what if we created some half-human half-ape.

Although the great apes are not as intelligent as us, they are pretty damn intelligent (estimated to be about that of a 5 year old, that is, testing what humans value as intelligence anyway.)

Humans in some parts of the world hunt and eat them, and we still experiment on them and force them to perform in circuses and Rice Crispie Commercials.

Maybe if it were CroMagnons instead, they would be spared from the circus, but not from dressing up like Austin Powers and selling CamCorders.

excreationist

Apparently many or most paleontologists thing that Neanderthals are a subspecies of our own - not a separate species - and that there was some interbreeding.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~chawkins/ideal.htm
http://www.sciforums.com/archive/69/2002/09/1/10470

For example, could (or should) Neanderthals have a basic right to life?
Let's assume you're talking about a more ape-like creature...
Even fellow human hunter-gatherers were killed a lot quite recently. I think people would be very hesitant to give them many rights, assuming that it can't be claimed that they are humans, "made in the image of God". The ape-like creatures would probably be just like mildly mentally-disabled hairy ugly people.
Anyway, in the case of mildly mentally-disabled people, they are usually our relatives, so then we'd want to look after them. But in the case of ape-like creatures, they aren't our relatives - or fellow humans - so we'd treat them with much less respect.
So how much respect "should" we treat them with? Well I'm a bit selfish and I might say that our treatment of them shouldn't interfere too much with the wellbeing of humans. i.e. they shouldn't take up too much useful land, etc.

Loren Pechtel

I suggest you read Robert Sawyer's books "Hominids" and "Humans". There's one more forthcoming whose title escapes me at present.

Basic idea: Something happened in the distant past, in their universe there are only Neanderthals. A mishap with a quantum computer links the two universes.